Many people lack a factual understanding of events in our region because the media report them inadequately. We blog here because our daughter Malki, murdered at the age of 15 in a restaurant massacre in Jerusalem, was a victim of jihadist hatred and barbarism. For jihadism and terrorism to end in Israel, New York, Madrid, London and everywhere else, people first need to understand the scale on which it is happening and why. This ongoing war is killing us.

Tuesday, March 10, 2015

10-Mar-15: The not-so-moderate Palestinian Authority and the terrorism it enables

The freshly moderate Abbas regime being
sworn in, June 2013. Abbas on the left, Ashrawi in white
[Image Source]

People
- like us - who have personally experienced the agony of terrorism ripping at
the fabric of their lives and familes tend to have a more black-and-white
response to those questions than others do. We don't think Abbas or the PA are
moderate at all. They are heart-and-soul for terrorism. And for pretending the
opposite.

A
good indication comes in news like this report from yesterday's Haaretz ["PA holding 50 Islamic
militants, fearing terror attack will give election to Likud", March
10, 2015]

Palestinian
Authority security services have arrested some 50 members of Hamas and Islamic
Jihad in the West Bank over the last two days, acting out of apparent fear
that a terror attack in the coming days would give the Israeli election to
Likud... Israeli security sources said the wave of arrests, which took
place in towns and villages throughout the West Bank, was ordered by PA
President Mahmoud Abbas. Most of those arrested belong to Hamas, but some
belong to Islamic Jihad...

So
to be clear about this: if there's a PA clamp-down on terrorists, it's temporary only,
and being done for a super-pragmatic reason (i.e. "fear
that a terror attack [now] would give the Israeli election to Likud...")
and certainly not because they oppose terror attacks on Israelis.
The photo below is a reminder of the high regard Abbas and his government have
for murdering, unrepentant terrorists.

The
arrests naturally cause their terror-addicted Hamas unity government 'partners' to foam and rage. The Jerusalem Post on Sunday quotes one Hamas
figure saying the arrests "prove that the Palestinian Authority has no
credibility", which makes some sense to us. Another, quoted in Times of Israel the same day, calls the PA's
actions "an act of national betrayal" and "a knife in
the back of the Palestinian people".

So what should the PA do? Clearly, if their goal is to keep their murdering, marauding, hate-filled terrorists on a national pedestal, then what they ought to be doing happens to be exactly what they are doing.

The Ministry of Finance announced on Saturday evening its intention to pay families of martyrs and wounded 100% [of the monthly payments guaranteed under PA pro-terrorism laws] despite the financial hardship being experienced by the PA... Finance Minister Shukri Bishara agreed to the payments... which will be implemented during the next two days. [FPNP, March 7, 2015]

A generous and sensitive soul, this Shukri Bishara. Though his government is, in the words of The Economist, "nearly broke", he's proudly and happily continuing to sign cheques for those jihad-reward payments to killers and assorted other terrorists, even advertising them via a press announcement.

But for the schleppers in the bloated ranks of the PA's under-employed civil service, a different class of treatment is on offer:

Bishara is, in some ways, the prototypical face of extremist PA "moderation". This emerges in a recent report featuring him and some previous acts of money-related trickiness and disingenuousness. Prior to becoming the PA's finance minister, he was chief executive of Arab Bank, a Jordan-based commercial giant currently struggling through ground-breaking litigation in a New York federal court. In September 2014, the jury in that case found Arab Bank liable for knowingly supporting terrorism efforts connected to two dozen attacks in the Middle East, the first time a bank has ever been held liable in a civil suit under a broad anti-terrorism statute.

Bishara, the PA's finance minister today, played a key role in the events examined by the court, as well as in the trial:

[He] admitted that he had cut a check for thousands of dollars to a senior Hamas leader while working for the bank... In one of many instances in the case where Arab Bank's witnesses have sparred with plaintiffs' lawyers, Bishara had originally said the bank wouldn’t have anything to gain by funding terrorists, before admitting that he had cut the check for a man on the US terror blacklist... While being questioned by his own lawyers as a supporting witness, Mr. Bishara presented in much the same manner that Arab Bank Chairman Sabih Al-Masri had: a charming, western-educated finance executive with strong ties to the West whose family was touched by terrorism... Mr. Bishara asserted that banks have a vested interest in peace, not violence... [But] Under cross examination by a counsel for plaintiffs, Mark Werbner, Mr. Bishara’s tone changed from gregarious to acrimonious... The most heated exchange came when Mr. Werbner asserted that Mr. Bishara released funds from a bank account belonging to senior Hamas leader Osama Hamdan... [Jerusalem Post, September 14, 2014]

Those two juries were called upon to decide who was lying and who ought to be believed. In both cases, press releases and media spin had not much of a role to play, but the facts did. And they spoke loudly and clearly.

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THIS ONGOING WAR is not part of the activity of the Malki Foundation which was founded by us, Frimet and Arnold Roth of Jerusalem, on September 9, 2001. But it is inspired by the same tragic circumstances. The Malki Foundation (also known by its Hebrew name: Keren Malki) is a memorial to the life of our daughter, Malki. She's in the photo below this paragraph. Malki was murdered at the age of 15 in a massacre in the centre of Jerusalem carried out by Hamas.

Beyond its function as a remembrance of a beautiful life, the foundation provides tangible, concrete, invaluable support daily to several thousand Israeli families from every part of the religious and socio-economic spectrum: Christian, Moslem, Jewish, Druze and others who care at home for a seriously disabled child.

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This Ongoing War: About this blog

Many people lack a factual understanding of events in our region because the media often report them inadequately. Our daughter Malki, murdered at the age of 15 in a restaurant massacre in Jerusalem, was a victim of jihadist hatred and barbarism. For jihadism and terrorism to end in Israel, in New York, in Madrid, in London and everywhere else, people first need to understand the scale on which it is happening. This ongoing war is killing us.